Apple ‘Spring Loaded’ Event — Thoughts…
Apple started the event with the gradient beam rounding the whole Apple Park, with great simulation, transition, and of course, great cinematography supporting the ‘Spring Loaded’ theme.
Apple filled this time Tim outdoors in Apple Park; the event with ridiculously exaggerated (imo) yet cool intros, fine Slo-mos, and apparently, Tim in action and disguise.
iPhone 12
Apple announced a new purple colour for iPhone 12 Mini and iPhone 12. The new variant will be available for pre-order this Friday, 23 April, and available from 30th April.
The moment I saw this variant, I was like, “Why?”. Please don’t get me wrong, the colour is quite pleasing, but there wasn’t a need, clearly out of the blue.
After this, AirTag was announced.
AirTag
Apple announced the much anticipated AirTag, a way to track third-party products with the help of Find My. This will help Apple grow its ecosystem to non-Apple products. You can personalize your AirTag with cool emojis and texts. Starting from iPhone 12, which sports U1 uses ‘Precision Finding’ for precise tracking.
AirTag will be available for $29 or $99 for a four-pack. You can order on Friday, April 23, and will be available beginning Friday, April 30.
Everything about AirTag is cool, be it Precision Finding, Unwanted Tracking, or ways to customize your AirTag.
B̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶A̶i̶r̶T̶a̶g̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶j̶u̶s̶t̶ ̶r̶i̶d̶i̶c̶u̶l̶o̶u̶s̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶e̶ ̶u̶n̶t̶i̶l̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶ ̶s̶e̶a̶r̶c̶h̶e̶d̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶k̶e̶y̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶c̶h̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶g̶u̶l̶p̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶q̶u̶e̶s̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶g̶a̶n̶.̶ ̶A̶ ̶’̶f̶i̶n̶e̶’̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶e̶x̶a̶g̶g̶e̶r̶a̶t̶e̶!̶ I had this thought during the live event but as of now that I’ve watched MKBHD’s and iJustine’s AirTag video. It’s pretty wild how they think of every aspect be it accessibility, privacy, durability.
Apple TV 4K
Apple bumped up the processor to A12 Bionic, which will help this Apple TV 4K stream HDR content at a high frame rate. Other than that, the Siri remote got a complete redesign with an all-new touch gesture control on the outer ring for precise seeking. The Siri button has been slapped to the right of the remote, just like in iPhone.
In mid announcing Apple TV 4K, we got to see the Tedd Lasso S2 teaser trailer. The thing I’m more interested in is the appearance of that iPhone 11 Pro Max Hannah Waddingham(Rebecca) is holding. It seems that the notch is a bit smaller than the current iPhones. But this isn’t the first time Apple pulled this off.
The new Apple TV 4K will be available starting at $179. You can order starting on Friday, April 30, and will be available in the second half of May.
Now, here comes the iMac.
iMac
With iMac, Apple took few steps ahead and a few backs. It got a complete redesign, any upgrade you could think of. Let’s see
Build & Design
Let’s start with colours; Apple has left us with so many colours, yet hard to go with either one. My go-to in this situation would be Silver because that would be the closest colour not to make me remind of those big white bezels, not to mention that chin.
I’m not here to wholly criticize the new iMacs; what they did with the thinness is impressive and applaudable, thanks to M1. But I thought they would knock off bezels, but instead, they made it more noticeable, a huge thanks to those random colours. Other than the design, everything else is improved and upgraded. But wasn’t the design of products, especially iMac Apple’s core?
Let me know with which colour you’d settle with.
Display
The new iMac flaunts a 24" 4.5K Retina Display with around 11.3M pixels with a P3-wide gamut, and the display can push up to 500 nits, and of course, the goodness of True Tone display.
Connectivity
iMac has 4 USB-C ports, out of which two are Thunderbolt ports for fast transfers and screen sharing to up to 6K display.
The way now the power connector attaches to iMac is with a ‘click’ — magnetically. It will be now easy, hassle-free, and not to forget satisfying to set up the iMac.
iMac now has a 1080p FaceTime HD camera paired with the latest Apple’s ISP will dynamically improve the lowlight performance of the camera. Now, the mic got an upgrade, too; iMac uses 3 arrays of mics to implement a better noise-canceling experience for better video calls. There are a total of 6 speaker systems, which comprise 4 subwoofers (2 on each side) and 1 tweeter and enable iMac to flaunt Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos. In short, they put the best camera, mic, and sound system ever in a Mac.
TouchID is now on Magic Keyboard for the first time; unlock the iMac swiftly, securely, easily. There’s a ‘secure processor’ on the Magic Keyboard responsible for the communication between Secure Enclave on M1. One can unlock their Mac, authenticate payments, and switch between user profiles with just a touch.
Performance
Introducing last year's announced ARM-based M1 chips to iMacs now deliver 80% faster CPU performance than the previous year's 21.5" iMac models, 2x faster graphics performance than the previous year's iMac models, and 3x faster Machine Learning.
With macOS Big Sur onboard, you can benefit from the seamless experience. Now that iMac also shares the same ARM architecture as iPhones and iPad, running iPhone and iPad apps on iMac is a breeze, a universal clipboard, and so much more.
The new iMac starts at $1299 and can be ordered beginning Friday, April 30, and available in the second half of May.
And, now comes another important product, iPad Pro
iPad Pro
Apple made a breakthrough and confusing leap with the new iPad Pro. Let’s see what I’m talking about.
Display
The 12.9'’ iPad Pro now flaunts a Liquid Retina Display XDR, and to implement this display into the thin iPad, Apple decided to go with mini-LEDs as it was tipped. There are around 10,000 mini-LEDs to reach the peak brightness of 1600nits, and it pushes up to 1000nits of full-screen brightness. They literally took the display tech from Pro Display XDR and slapped it onto the 12.9" iPad Pro. We will have to test that out to see how much of a difference it makes.
Connectivity
The new iPad Pro is now 5G enabled for a much faster cellular internet speed, supporting mmWave in the US. Apple has upgraded the USB-C port to Thunderbolt with USB 4.0 support and now can use an external display with up to 6K resolution.
TrueDepth camera has got an upgrade too, now iPad flaunts a new 12MP Ultra-wide camera with a 120-degree field of view but what’s more interesting is Centre Stage where during a video call, the iPad will track the object and pan with the object to keep the object in the frame. I would really like to see some real-life scenarios of this tech.
Performance
Apple has announced the new iPad Pro with the M1 chip in it. It’s not even a year since Apple announced the iPad Air with their first 5nm A14 chip which was way ahead of its competition, but bringing M1 to iPad doesn’t make sense. You get power, yes, a lot but you were already getting that with A14.
I’m just making myself clear here — I’m totally up with upgrading what is already the best. But now iPad Pro is like a weird, confusing, and lost product that doesn’t know where it stands. It is almost as powerful as the M1 MacBook yet not completely up with it, expensive for an iPad but still not there to replace MacBook. Does that sound like the new iPad? Yes, it does!
I can’t think of a single reason for bringing M1 to iPad, and it would be absurd to think of mini-LEDs or new Liquid Retina XDR as a legit reason, cuz that’d make A14 Bionic look like an underperformer that isn’t enough to render that XDR display or manage those over 10K mini-LEDs.
Although it doesn’t lose any of its perks and only becomes overpowered. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple goes full M1 all over its product, who knows, the common architecture among all Apple products might help them provide a better experience and more seamless experience to their customers. But, still not on board with this transmission.
The new 11” iPad Pro will start at $799 and the 12.9” will start at $1099. They can be ordered on Friday, April 30, and available in the second half of May.
So, that’s it! Thanks for reading! Stay safe and well! ☮
